Back

Let me repeat something for folks that didn't hear it the first time: Black people did not love OJ.

OJ was basically the Kanye West of the 80s. He even hung out with the Kardashians! He was one of those anti-Black, pro-Reagan, Black Republican type celebrities.

This is not about OJ. At all.

It's entirely possible to show empathy for the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, dislike OJ and suspect his guilt, and be against systemic racism, all at the same time.

The advent of smartphones and body worn police cameras has changed white folks' perception of how often the police lie, brutalize Black people, and plant evidence. It hasn't changed Black people's opinions, because we already knew the truth. We didn't need smartphones. We got the Augmented Reality interactive experience.

You have to understand that at the time of the OJ trial, most of the United States still believed that Black folk were making all of the stories of police brutality up.

With George Floyd, the world witnessed just one police officer cruelly asphyxiate one Black man in cold blood. The star witness in the OJ trial, the cop that found most of the evidence, was a racist that boasted about LA cops strangling about a dozen Black men to death.

"We stopped the choke because a bunch of [N-words] have a bunch of these organizations in the south end, and because all [N-words] are choked out and killed -- twelve in ten years. Really is extraordinary, isn't it?"

And he bragged that he's better than most cops because he has the "courage" to just kill suspects he doesn't like by shooting them in the back, and shooting to kill, not just to stop, and working with a partner to cover up the murder.

And he talked about a particular suspect that he plans to kill if he is ever alone with that person. That would be premeditated murder.

This "highly decorated cop" also bragged about planting evidence against Black people to secure guilty verdicts in the past.

When OJ was arrested, a sample of blood was drawn from him, to compare DNA against crime scene samples. Let's say they withdrew X units of blood. Makes sense.

But instead of that blood being taken from where it was drawn from OJ, directly to the lab, that blood was taken *to the crime scene* by the same racist officer that has admitted to planting evidence in the past.

When the blood eventually did show up at the lab, some of it was "missing." Only Y units showed up at the lab. Y < X.

After the blood took this little detour, a bunch of OJ's blood was found at the scene.

But the LAPD's own blood splatter expert testified that this blood was placed there *after the crime*, and was almost certainly blood *from a medical collection tube*.

Because it did not spatter like real normal blood would have, it didn't separate, and because the blood contained the chemical anti-coagulant found at the bottom of blood sample tubes.

When that star witness police officer was asked point blank if he had planted the evidence, he invoked the 5th amendment.

For folks outside the US: The 5th amendment is invoked when a person feels that saying anything further could incriminate themselves.

Instead of saying, "No, I did not plant evidence at the OJ Simpson crime scene," he said, "I'm not answering any more questions, because I might incriminate myself."

That star witness was also caught lying under oath during the OJ trial, committing perjury. Specifically, he lied about his racism.

Most people that are convinced that OJ did it, believe that based on evidence found by this one police officer. It really comes down to if you believe that a cop that has admitted to planting evidence in the past, is caught lying under oath during this trial, and pleads the 5th rather than saying "I did not plant evidence here again," could have planted evidence.

It was a referendum on the fairness of Los Angeles policing.

Many Black people's views on OJ:

* He probably did it
* Had motive and opportunity
* It's often the husband
* OJ is a bad person anyway
* I don't want a murderer to go free. I want people to see how evil LA policing is.
* Johnny Cochran exposed what we've been saying all along
* OJ may have killed 2 innocent people, but cops kill dozens of innocent Black people
* Cops lie in court. They plant false evidence.
* I like Johnny Cochran!

If OJ was the Kanye of the '80s, then Johnny Cochran was the Ben Crump of the '90s.

Only a fantastically racist system could get a conviction under the circumstances of the OJ trial, with the defense that Johnny Cochran put together. Cochran proved that yes, the system is racist, but with enough money and a smart enough lawyer, that racism could be exposed.

If OJ was convicted, that would be incredibly demoralizing for Black folk. It would show that justice just does not apply for Black folk.

Because of racism, Johnny Cochran's accomplishment of bringing all of this racism to light was reduced to the jury being gullible, and him being a fast-talking minstrel. All of the work uncovering this corruption was reduced to "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!"

In the wake of the disaster that was the failure to get a conviction, the government proposed all types of changes. None of the changes involved ridding the police force of remaining cops like the one that tanked this case.

Most of the world was not ready to even begin to understand why Black folk celebrated the OJ verdict.

Now that the world has seen George Floyd, and understands what Ben Crump does for the families of George Floyd and so many others, we might be able to understand.

Read the entire transcript of that star officer, in his own words:

https://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/fuhrman.htm

Please don't try to talk to any Black people, (especially me!), about the OJ trial, if you have not read this transcript in its entirety.

@mekkaokereke THANK YOU for writing this. I’d only been in the US barely two years when the OJ trials happened (I grew up in Singapore), and I watched with confusion as a large group of black friends in college celebrated when the Not Guilty verdict was read. What was even more confusing was that many of them didn’t seem to care whether OJ was guilty or not.

Decades later, thanks to this thread, the pieces finally clicked into place.

@drahardja @mekkaokereke likewise, I was a kid in another country and it was basically framed as "OJ got away with murder" on the radio and in the papers, the subtext in every piece about it could be summed up as "everyone knows he did it".

In the intervening years I'd picked up enough for my understanding to develop to "the prosecution's evidence had substantial problems" but holy hell I did not know the half of it.

@http_error_418 @drahardja @mekkaokereke I was a kid at the time and "rich people can afford tricky lawyers who will get them out of anything" was definitely what I learned from it. Zero faith in The Justice System :tm: because money buys "justice."

I still don't think that's _wrong_.

It took a whole lot longer to get to "actually the cops are literally the bad guys"

@Magess @drahardja @mekkaokereke oh definitely, and it's an issue that's gotten ten times worse in the UK of late with the systematic defunding of public defenders and the court system as a whole. It's not bad in quite the same way as the pretrial detention horror show in the States, but it's still really bad.